


Knight Moves

by suitesamba



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:11:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1596116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Severus get to know each other a few years after the war ends when each of them is sentenced to community service on the Knight Bus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knight Moves

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the 2014 Snarry-a-Thon on the Snape_Potter community on LJ/IJ/DW. Beta'd by the wonderful badgerlady. The prompt was "Harry and Severus as conductor and driver of the Knight Bus."

ooOoo

“This is supposed to be community service?”

Harry Potter stood beside Percy Weasley with his arms folded over his chest, staring at the three-decker purple bus parked in a quiet alleyway behind a dilapidated cottage just outside of Hogsmeade.

“The Knight Bus is provided to the magical community as a service. The fares charged are nominal and do not begin to cover the expense of running the service.” Percy was in full lecture mode now. “As you learned in your orientation class, I trust, the Knight Bus is available to all members of the magical community – witches, wizards and squibs. It’s especially popular with squibs who don’t have access to other means of magical transportation….”

“I’ve ridden the Knight Bus, Perce. Several times.” Try as he might, he couldn’t remember anything remotely pleasant about those experiences, and the overall impression that remained with him still was a vague sense of nausea. Harry signed and took several steps back, shielding his eyes as he looked up toward the top of the bus. “So – Friday and Saturday nights from 9 p.m. ‘til 6 a.m. That’s my punishment.”

Percy bristled. “Assignment,” he corrected.

“Yeah, right. Assignment. Sorry.” Harry still saw Percy at the Burrow for family dinners from time to time. He didn’t want to have this argument in front of the entire Weasley clan. Better to just agree now.

“You’ll have your three hundred hours done in no time,” Percy said. He probably meant to sound encouraging, but managed to leave the impression that three hundred hours was too light a sentence. “I’d suggest you tour the bus now, but they’re waiting for you over at Gladrags for your uniform fitting.”

“Uniform?” Harry took two steps backward, away from Percy, just as Percy spun on his heels and started walking away. “Oh no – I remember that uniform, Percy. Percy!” He took off after him, pulling at his arm when he caught up. “It’s purple!” He shuddered. “Purple _velvet_. With gold braid.

“Velveteen, actually,” said Percy with a stiff grin. “And Snape had the same reaction.”

“Sna…?” Harry spun on his heel as Percy started to walk away. “Wait right there, Percy Weasley.” His voice brooked no argument. “What’s this about _Snape_?”

Percy turned. He rolled his eyes. “Well, you don’t expect the Knight Bus to drive itself, do you?”

ooOoo

**Partial Amnesty Offered for Unforgiveables**

>   
> _April 15, 2001_ Witches and wizards who used Unforgiveable curses during the three-year reign of the Dark Lord (May 1995 – May 1998) are being offered limited amnesty by the Ministry of Magic. Trials will be waived for all those who turn themselves in by May 31st, and prison time will be replaced by community service, magical probation and financial reparations. While the curses were made legal by the Dark Lord in 1997, this law change was ruled null and void, as his claim to power was not authorized by Wizarding law.
> 
> “The sheer number of witches and wizards who cast Unforgiveables during Voldemort’s regime is, from a practical perspective, unmanageable,” said Minister Shacklebolt during the press conference where the amnesty plan was revealed. “We simply do not have the resources to imprison this many people and remove them from productive society. War is hell – the terrorism imposed by Voldemort caused law-abiding citizens to resort to desperate measures.”
> 
> Shacklebolt went on to say that each case would be reviewed individually and appropriate reparations set based on the severity of the offense, its intended use and its ultimate consequences.

ooOoo

**Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall Among Amnesty Seekers**

>   
> _June 3, 2001_ The Ministry of Magic has published the list of those seeking amnesty for using one or more Unforgiveable curses during the years of the Dark Lord’s regime. The names of two hundred and fourteen individuals appear on the list, including those of more than ninety students who attended Hogwarts during the 1997-1998 academic year.
> 
> Convicted Death Eaters and other supporters of Voldemort who are currently incarcerated were not included on the Amnesty list.
> 
> Harry Potter, now a novice Auror, and Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts, both released simple statements acknowledging having used the curses in the course of the war. “It was regrettable,” McGonagall’s statement reads, “but was the only prudent action at the time, given the impending attack on the castle.” Professor McGonagall admits using the Imperius Curse on a Hogwarts professor and Death Eater when Harry Potter and his companions had returned to Hogwarts just before the Final Battle.
> 
> Potter’s statement reads, “I appreciate the amnesty offer from the Ministry of Magic and will accept any and all reparations given me.”
> 
> Severus Snape, Headmaster of Hogwarts during the Ministry reign of the Dark Lord, also submitted his name for the Amnesty program, despite having been granted a full Ministry pardon for all crimes committed during the war.

ooOoo

Two men, both dressed in startling purple velveteen uniforms with brass buttons and gold piping, stood facing the three-decker purple bus. Their postures were similar – arms crossed, shoulders back, backs rigid. Decidedly disapproving.

“Are you sure you can drive this thing?” The younger man looked sidelong at the older. The bus, which had appeared to be idling quietly despite having been out of service for sixteen hours, gave a hiccough and a rattle.

“Not at all. My training consisted of a walk-through of the bus and an inspection of my Muggle driving license.”

Harry stared. Standing here, having a conversation – an adult, non-adversarial conversation – with the former bane of his existence, Severus Snape, was a completely new experience. Especially since Snape hadn’t yet said or done anything to even suggest that they’d once had an adversarial relationship, or, for that matter, any relationship at all.

“How does it work, anyway?” Harry stepped forward and squinted at a rusty panel covered with worn gold lettering. Focusing on the bus instead of on the impossibility of being thrown into a three-hundred-hour community service sentence with _Snape_ seemed to be working well for the time being.

“Muggle diesel engine enhanced with magic,” drawled Snape. “Or so I assume.” He walked to the front of the bus and kicked a tire with an expensive but worn dragon-hide boot.

Harry leaned against the bus and bit back a grin. “That never seemed to help much when my Uncle Vernon did it to his car.”

“Hmm.” Snape crouched down and examined the tire, then stuck his head under the bus to look at the chassis. “My father always said it hurt less than kicking the door,” he said, unfazed.

“Ah.” Harry ran that one over in his head. Snape had just mentioned his father. Casually.

Snape stood and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Well, come then, Potter. Our shift starts in fifteen minutes and we’ve yet to actually get _on_ the bus.”

Harry followed this stranger ( _Snape – it’s Snape_ ) up three steep stairs to the first deck of the bus. It was hard to believe that there were actually three of these monstrosities, each running an eight-hour shift, then retiring to an out-of-the-way Wizarding street while the next shift started with both a fresh bus and a fresh crew, and a maintenance team cleaned, serviced and fueled the off-duty buses.

“I don’t get it,” Harry said. He caught the money belt Snape pulled off a hook and tossed his way, and buckled it around his waist. “Molly’s working morning shifts at a Wizarding orphanage. Zabini’s doing janitorial work at the Ministry after hours. And they’ve got Gretchen Stafford and a half dozen other former students washing bedpans at St. Mungo’s.” He peered at the checklist on the window behind the driver’s seat and sighed. “Refreshing Charm on bedsheets. You mean the cleaning crew doesn’t change sheets? Ugh. Remind me never to sleep on one of these beds.” He got to work, climbing to the top deck first, then making his way downstairs a few minutes later.

He found Snape sitting in the driver’s seat, frowning at the instrument panel. To say that Snape looked at home here would be an exaggeration, but he certainly didn’t look as out-of-place as Harry might have imagined. Of course, he’d never seen the man in a purple velveteen uniform before.

“My father’s ’59 Ford had more on the instrument panel than this thing,” he muttered.

Hmm. Another mention of his father. 

“You were joking earlier, weren’t you? You _have_ driven this before?” Harry poked his head around the half-partition, wand in hand. He’d already filled eight hot-water bottles and arranged them on a shelf between layers of towels imbued with Warming Charms. The next item on the list was, “Vanish Vomit.” It was squeezed into the list in bad handwriting. Harry suspected the cleaning crew.

“No.” Snape pushed a button experimentally. Harry looked back to see the ceiling fans over the beds start to whirl. 

“’No’ as in ‘No, I’ve driven a bus but not _this_ bus?’” Harry adjusted his ridiculous hat, pulling the short bill down to cover his scar.

“Mr. Potter – I can only assume I was given this job because I answered ‘yes’ to a question on the survey I was given. That question was ‘Have you ever driven a Muggle automobile?’ The regular weekday drivers of this….this – ” he appeared to struggle for the word, “ – this _vehicle_ are mediocre magic users with scant education but with – pay attention, Mr. Potter, this part is important – _balls of steel._ ”

Ah. Finally. The “Mr. Potter” put him back in more familiar territory with Snape. 

“I’m brave,” he muttered.

“Not this brave,” replied Snape. 

What? Had Snape just passed up a brilliant opportunity to mention his foolhardy Gryffindorishness?

Snape pushed another button. The hydraulic door eased shut. He continued studying the instrument panel in silence.

Harry dropped into the seat beside the driver’s. He pushed his spectacles up and rubbed his tired eyes. It was Friday, and he’d already worked a full eight-hour shift. This experience was surreal. This job hadn’t even appeared on the Ministry’s list of community service “opportunities.” Percy had introduced it to him at his sentencing, had indicated to him that the MLE thought it presented the perfect schedule so he could continue his Auror duties uninterrupted. And Snape! Snape had been pardoned while he was still in St. Mungo’s and had faded out of sight and mind soon thereafter. Harry supposed he should have wondered where he was, what he was doing, given the circumstances of his near death, but it had been a difficult few years, and Harry’d had his mind and his hands full.

He looked sidelong at Snape, trying to see his former professor, the former spy, Dumbledore’s man. The last time he’d seen Snape before today was the day after the battle, after Madam Pomfrey had stabilized him at Hogwarts, and before he’d been transferred to St. Mungo’s. He’d sat beside his bed for more than an hour, staring at the unconscious man, feeling guilty, relieved, but mostly just very, very tired. 

Apart from the uniform, Snape didn’t look much different now than he’d ever looked. 

Well, that wasn’t altogether true. He seemed happier, maybe. Though happier wasn’t really the right word. Calmer? More settled? Definitely less agitated.

And just why was _Snape_ here, anyway? He’d been pardoned, pardoned for a hell of a lot, but _specifically_ for his use of the Killing Curse against Albus Dumbledore. 

Something about both of them being here now, dressed in these stupid matching purple uniforms, put them, in Harry’s mind at least, on even ground. It helped that Snape wasn’t acting at all like his professor, or even as his superior. So Harry gathered his courage and dared to ask the question that was foremost in his mind.

“So, why did you petition for amnes…whoa!”

The bus had lurched forward, rolling along the old cobbled street at a decidedly unsafe speed. 

“Left! Sharp turn to the left!” cried out Harry. He was obviously of the opinion that Snape couldn’t see the road through the giant glass windscreen.

“Pick-up at Shandwick Place and Manor Drive, Edinburgh. One adult, standard priority.”

A voice – a familiar voice – came from nowhere and everywhere.

“Professor McGonagall?”

“Apparition point, Edinburgh.” Snape had negotiated the hard left turn and was scanning the instrument panel again. As Harry watched, mouth still agape from having just heard Professor McGonagall’s distinctive and disembodied voice filling the driver’s compartment of the bus, Snape slammed his left hand on a large green button in the middle of the instrument panel.

“Auuuuuggggghhhhhhhhhh!”

Harry wasn’t opposed to Apparition. He used it frequently, in fact, as the most expedient and efficient way to go from one known Wizarding location to another. He didn’t use it to pop into Tesco’s, or to make it to the Muggle cinema after work in time to meet Hermione for the early show. Apparition was fine, if you were the Apparator, and you weren’t looking out the front window of a giant purple three-decker bus when said Apparition occurred.

Of _course_ the bus Apparated. He should have known that. He’d been on the bus plenty of times, hadn’t he?

So why was he lying on the floor now, having just emptied his stomach of the fish and chips he’d hurriedly downed after work?

He struggled to his feet, glancing out the window as he did so.

His stomach flip-flopped and he grabbed onto the pole beside the stairs to steady himself.

They must be in Edinburgh, because buildings were jumping out of their way now, and a bridge developed an extra lane to accommodate the bus.

“Could you warn me next time?” begged Harry.

Snape grinned. Or was it a smirk? In either case, it looked slightly maniacal.

“Was I hallucinating or was that Professor McGonagall’s voice?” Harry asked. He had collapsed back into his chair and was fumbling around for a seat belt. Which didn’t exist. Apparently, safety was _not_ first on the Knight Bus.

“Are you prone to hallucinations? Hearing voices in your head?” Snape asked. He grunted as he maneuvered the bus through a busy roundabout.

Harry stared at him. “You’re _enjoying_ this, aren’t you? Driving this thing? Watching me chuck up my biscuits?”

“I hardly enjoyed that,” answered Snape. He was continuing to drive while consulting a laminated flipbook filled with map insets. Finally, he tossed it over his shoulder and took out his wand. “Point me Shandwick and Manor,” he said. He dropped the wand on the instrument panel and observed it as it spun and pointed behind them.

By the time the bus stopped at the corner of Shandwick and Manor, Harry was ready to abandon ship. Permanently. But the woman outside waiting was vastly pregnant and panting heavily. 

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard,” Harry began. He’d practiced this part at home in front of the mirror and had it down perfectly. “Just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Harry, and I’ll be your conductor this evening." He picked up her carry-on bag. “Now, what’s your destination tonight….?”

“Really? REALLY?” She pushed past him and stopped one step up, holding onto the handrail. She started panting heavily, blowing out air in short bursts. Finally, she glared at Harry and pulled herself onboard the bus. Harry followed her at a safe distance. She collapsed on one of the beds. 

He decided against collecting her fare, figuring he’d just pay the fare himself if it came down to it.

“Mungo’s!” he announced, then stuck his head into the driver’s compartment. “And hurry. I think she’s in labour.”

“HURRY!”

The bus lurched forward again.

“Exceeding maximum recommended speed for city travel.” Professor McGonagall’s voice filled the compartment again. “Please decrease velocity or I’ll be forced to activate the regulator.”

“We’ve got a woman in labour!” Harry protested. He was hanging onto the stability bar with both hands. He didn’t know where to direct his voice. “And I thought you said this pick-up was standard priority!”

“Did I? Oh my. Well, you’d better hurry. Try transfiguring a Sickle into a hot-water bottle.”

“We _have_ hot-water bottles already,” said Harry.

“They’re not doing her much good on the shelf, are they?” Snape said. But the way it came out, he might have said, “Well then, you’d better get her one then, shouldn’t you?” Had Snape run out of snark? Or was the business of driving the bus so all-consuming that he couldn’t manage sarcasm at the same time?

Harry scowled, but stood to fetch a water bottle for their passenger. He’d just let go of the stability bar when Snape hit the Apparition button again.

The transition was much smoother this time – either Snape was getting better or the passenger’s compartment was magically configured differently than the driver’s. Harry managed to present a bright red hot-water bottle to the soon-to-be mother, feeling terribly awkward, only to have it hurled at his back as he returned to the front of the bus.

“Ow!”

Of course it burst open, soaking his uniform and running down into his pants and trousers.

Snape looked almost gleeful when he walked, bow-legged, into the cab. “Potter, if our night continues like this, I might just volunteer for more hours,” he said.

They had two more pick-ups queued up before they arrived at St. Mungo’s. They also had a walk-on at the hospital, a man covered from head to toe in a lime-green healer’s robe. He had the hood pulled up and partially draped over his face. 

“Destination?” Harry asked, tiredly. He’d been determined to keep a bright face on and had convinced himself that the hours would fly by, that this would be an adventure, not a tiresome task. That resolve had left him about the same time he’d found himself on the floor surrounded by his supper.

“I don’t remember,” said the man. He sounded surprised. He sat on a bed and fluffed the pillow. “What was my name again?”

“But fares are based on distance,” protested Harry. “How can I…? Wait. Wait just a minute.” Something about that voice was very familiar. He reached forward and pushed the hood away from the man’s face.

Lockhart.

Harry backed away, then turned and ducked back into the cab just as Snape pressed the Apparition button again.

“Whooooaaaa!” 

Harry managed to stay upright during the Apparition, opening his eyes just in time to see a cathedral jump out of their way.

“No! Back to St. Mungo’s! That was Gilderoy Lockhart that just got on!”

“Well, he’s your problem for the time being, then,” Snape said, using a hand-over-hand method to steer the bus around a busy car park. “I can’t leave the driver’s compartment.”

“But he’s mental!” Harry chanced a glance back. Lockhart was out of bed now and heading for the spiral staircase leading to the second deck.

“Then why did you let him on?” asked Snape. He stepped on the brakes, half-standing to do so, and they stopped abruptly in front of a village pub. “Two here,” he said. “Then we pick up the next two before….”

“Next _two_?”

“Leave the driving to me, Potter,” Snape said, eying him critically. His gaze lingered a bit longer than comfortable around Harry’s middle, one side of his mouth quirking up in an amused smile. “And zip your flies.”

Harry’s hand automatically dropped to his zip, which was, embarrassingly enough, open. He adjusted it and glared at Snape, then hurried to the kerb.

Within an hour, every bed on the bus was occupied, with six wizards on a stag night using the Knight Bus as their designated driver and taking up an entire deck. They were a jolly but demanding lot, and kept Harry on his toes warming hot-water bottles and making change. 

He was convinced that Snape got lost more than once – he couldn’t fathom any other reason for them to be driving around the track at Ascot. At one point, the bus was quiet enough that he was able to duck into the driver’s compartment and collapse on the conductor’s jump seat. 

“Don’t we get a break?” he asked. He tilted his head tiredly as the bus narrowly missed a herd of cows and careened through a hay barn. 

“Absolutely. You drive for a bit and I’ll be conductor,” Snape suggested. 

Harry turned his head slowly. He stared at Snape. He tried to bite back a grin but failed. 

“You _like_ this,” he accused Snape.

“Halfway through,” announced the voice of their dispatcher, who Harry now knew _was_ Professor McGonagall. She had slipped into her brogue while Snape argued with her the first time they were stuck in the Piccadilly Circus traffic circle. “What’s Gilderoy up to now, Harry?”

“He’s joined the stag party,” Harry said. “So far they’ve always brought him back with them after each pub.”

“I’m doing what I can with the route to get you back to St. Mungo’s before the last stop,” she said. 

“It would have been helpful to know that people who use the Knight Bus in the middle of the night are either drunk, in labour or escaping hospital mental wards,” Harry muttered.

“Oh, come now, Harry,” said McGonagall, her voice echoing around the compartment. “Surely there must be some late-night commuters.”

“Nope,” he said. “Though we’ve a couple from Manchester up on the second deck just trying to get a good night’s sleep while her mother stays home with the baby. They tried to get me to lower the fare since they’re only using one bed. I told them that they’d not have the problem of a crying baby if they’d each kept to their own bed to begin with.”

“Harry! You didn’t!” McGonagall sounded more amused than horrified.

Surprisingly, the second half of the shift went by far faster than the first. At a quarter to six, Minerva gave them their last pick-up, and at six o’clock sharp, Snape maneuvered the bus back into the alley connecting Warlock Way and Cobstone Court in Hogsmeade.

Harry hobbled off behind Snape. He’d managed a Drying Charm after the water bottle incident, but he was still a bit chafed.

“Do we have to lock it or something?” he asked. He’d added up the till while Snape completed the nightly route report, and had had to put in twelve Galleons of his own to make up for the shortfall from forgetting to collect fares from every passenger.

“Why would we want to do that?” Snape asked. “ _Prevent_ someone from stealing it?”

Harry grinned. He liked this Snape. This Snape didn’t complain – much, seemed to genuinely enjoy driving the monstrous vehicle, and hadn’t yelled at him in anger or derision even once during the entire shift. In a Voldemort-free world, was Severus Snape _nice_?

“Maybe we should leave it running,” he suggested.

Snape chuckled.

“Go home, Potter. Get some sleep. I’ve heard Saturdays are worse than Fridays.” He looked up at the bus once more, shook his head, then Apparated away.

ooOoo

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have had that conversation with Ron and Hermione during their regular Wednesday dinner out that week.

Hermione, for her part, was fascinated with the bus itself – the magic that allowed a non-sentient object to actually Apparate. She went on and on about the bus parasitically sucking magic from the driver and passengers, a concept that made Harry squeamish. She had a hundred questions for him – literally. Well, seventy-seven, anyway. She typed them out on her laptop, then printed the document and owled it to him that evening. 

Ron, on the other hand, was far more interested in the passengers, and oddly intrigued with Snape.

“But it’s _Snape_ , Harry. He’s really kept to himself since the Battle – Percy said no one sees much of him at all. Don’t you wonder what he’s been up to?”

“Let the man have his privacy, Ron,” Hermione said. “He’s certainly earned it – as has Harry, for that matter. I can’t believe they gave you two such a _public_ job. Or that they gave you any job at all – you certainly didn’t have to come forward, Harry, and Snape’s already been pardoned.”

Harry gave her the look. They’d discussed his petition for amnesty for weeks before he’d actually submitted it. Ron thought he was bonkers. Hermione had wanted to turn herself in, too, for having come up with the Gringotts plan, even though it hadn’t specifically included the use of the Imperius Curse.

“All right, all right,” she conceded. “But Snape _has_ been pardoned.”

“I asked him about that,” said Harry as the waiter brought the cheque. They let Hermione sort it out, as always. “Why he requested amnesty. But he didn’t answer.”

“Be careful what you ask, Harry – he could ask the same of you.” 

Harry shrugged. “He’s not got around to asking questions yet,” he said. “He’s too busy trying to drive the bus.”

“Lucky sod,” muttered Ron. His eyes lit up suddenly, and he leaned forward. “Hey. You don’t suppose he’d let me have a go at it, do you?”

“Oh, absolutely, Ron. Just come on ‘round this Friday. You might want to get there a bit early so he can show you the ropes. Then he can go have a pint at the Hog’s Head while you get stuck on the Piccadilly Circus roundabout for a couple of hours.”

Hermione gave Harry an amused grin. “Ron, have you forgotten what happened the last time you drove a car?”

“How could I forget? You remind me of it every time I talk about getting a car. Can you just let it go already?”

And now, his second Saturday night on the Knight Bus, Harry jumped down onto the kerb outside a pub in Ottery St. Catchpole, ready with his tinned introduction. They’d been dispatched to pick up a group of eight people and transport them to the Hog’s Head in Hogsmeade.

“Oh no. No no no no NO.” He folded his arms across his middle and blocked the door.

“Public transport and all that,” said George Weasley, grinning. “I’m afraid you have to let us on.”

Harry spread out his arms and physically barred the door. George grinned, and behind him, Ron, Lee Jordan, Neville, Dean, and a couple others Harry hadn’t yet identified, cheered.

“Knight Bus! Knight Bus! Harry’s working the Knight Bus! Knight Bus! Knight Bus! Harry’s….”

“Potter! We’ve got a pick-up in Glasgow and we’re already behind schedule! Piss or get off the pot!”

The group on the kerb backed up as one. 

Harry smirked.

“Ta,” he said, happy the sound of Snape’s voice still had that effect on them. Holy hell – he was being _saved_ by Severus Snape!

Oh, right. Again.

He wasn’t quite up the stairs when the group on the kerb rallied. He was pushed forward and up from behind as the lot of them stormed onto the bus, lifting him into the air and plopping him down onto the first bed. A bed that was, unfortunately, already occupied by Mundungus Fletcher.

Ottery St. Catchpole to Hogsmeade to Diagon Alley to Godric’s Hollow and back to Hogsmeade, then down to Bath.

Very little in the world was less fun and more work than being the sober one at a pub crawl.

George started a rowdy round of “A hundred bottles of beer on the wall” and soon had the entire bus singing along. They were on seventy-two when they got off at their next pub, and somehow remembered their place when they boarded again. After the third pub, Dean and Lee did an impromptu pole dance using the upright poles along the spiral stairway. And Ron managed to sneak into the driver’s compartment while Harry was delivering hot chocolate to a family on the second level and contemplating gouging his eyes out after witnessing the pole dancing. Snape hit Ron with a well-placed Incarcerous, and Harry found him bound tightly to the conductor’s jump seat and decided to leave him there for a bit.

Harry started charging his friends double when they staggered back on at Diagon Alley, triple when they boarded at Bath.

It was Snape himself who ejected them from the bus at the Leaky Cauldron at three a.m. and sent his Patronus to Molly and Arthur Weasley. Harry wanted to hug him.

By six o’clock, when Snape pulled the bus into the alleyway, Harry was ready to collapse. He had collapsed, in fact, ridiculous purple uniform and all, back onto one of the beds, not caring one whit about the oft-used sheets. When he opened his eyes, he found Snape there, at the end of the bed, staring at him. They looked at each other, silently, assessing, for several moments before Snape spoke.

“Perhaps you should have spread the word that the weekend Knight Bus is the vehicle of choice for pub crawling a bit closer to the end of our service here, Mr. Potter.”

Harry lifted his head to stare at Snape, then let it drop back onto the bed in defeat. “I mentioned last weekend’s stag party to Ron. In passing. One time.”

“Hmmm. Did you speak to anyone else, perchance?”

Harry sighed. He dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers.

“Hermione,” he said. He tossed the papers in Snape’s general direction. “She had a few questions about the bus.”

He heard Snape catch the papers and riffle through them.

“You have odd friends, Mr. Potter,” he said after a bit. 

“Tell me about it,” answered Harry. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. The hat gave him hat hair. He pulled it off and rested it on his chest, eyes still closed, feet hanging off the side of the bed. He could sleep – right here, right now. 

“Why did you petition for amnesty, Mr. Potter?” Snape’s voice, low and curious, floated down on him as he lay there. “You defeated Voldemort. You are above reproach.”

He waited there, even though Harry didn’t answer immediately.

“I’m not above anything,” answered Harry finally. “And I wanted people to know that.”

He sat up then, rested his feet on the floor of the bus, staring at the toes of his boots. He looked up at Snape. “What about you? Why did you petition? You’d already been pardoned.” 

“Pardoned – yes,” Snape said. He took off his purple hat and tucked it under his arm. “But not forgiven.” He gave Harry one last appraising look, then turned and left the bus. 

Harry stared after him, wondering why forgiveness was so important to a man like Severus Snape.

_A man like Severus Snape._

He shook his head. It was becoming quite obvious that he really didn’t know Severus Snape at all.

ooOoo

Over the next two months, Harry got to know Snape quite a bit better.

Working the Knight Bus, after those first two weekends of establishing the routine, sorting out McGonagall’s rather inorganic dispatching, and learning the back roads of the UK, while not necessarily a pleasure, became less of a chore. They’d discussed the problem of the intoxicated pub crawlers, and were now serving complimentary tea with a dollop of Sober-up Potion slipped in for good measure. It calmed things down substantially on the bus, and if it was a hair across the legal threshold – forced drugging and all that – Harry and Snape weren’t telling.

Harry’s favorite moments during those endless long nights were the occasional down times. Down times came when the last passenger exited and they hadn’t yet been dispatched to pick up a new one.

Sometimes, they were both so exhausted that they’d sleep. One of them had to stay in the cab to listen for new calls, but they’d take turns napping up front while the other stretched out on the bed nearest the door. 

Snape snored. Not loudly, not with his mouth hanging open, but quietly, a low, rumbling hum, just enough to let you know he was well and truly asleep. He always took off his boots when he slept, arranging them side by side near the foot of the bed. He wore thin black socks over long and narrow feet, the great toe curving down to nestle around the toe beside it. Harry told himself he wasn’t fascinated by Snape’s feet. They were simply the part of Snape that was most exposed, and nearest to him when he climbed down to get a breath of fresh air outside. Still, he glanced at them far more than he glanced at, say, the No Smoking sign on the wall, or the spider someone had squashed on the window. 

When it was Harry’s turn to sleep up front and McGonagall’s voice (less and less cheery as the night wore on) chimed in to send them off to a new pick-up, he’d learned to wake Snape by shaking the brass footboard. He’d learned this after the only time he’d reached down to tentatively shake the man’s shoulder.

He’d ended up on his back on the bed, Snape atop him, the length of his wand pressed tight against Harry’s throat, arms pinned above his head in the steel grip of a single hand. The man went from dead asleep to awake and one hundred percent on his game in a heartbeat.

They stared at each other, nose to nose, both breathing hard, until Snape blinked and rolled off him, nearly leaping to his feet.

Harry took a breath, trying to still his rapidly beating heart. That had been frightening, of course, but also oddly arousing. He covered his discomfort with a laugh, filing it away for future analysis.

“And _I’m_ supposed to be the Auror?” he said. 

“It’s the uniform,” replied Snape, too quickly, indicating the purple velveteen. “You can’t react like an Auror in _that_.”

“You’re – you’re giving me an _out_?” Harry said, gobsmacked. He had rolled off the opposite side of the bed, and stood there, facing Snape. _This_ Snape. Not his professor. Not Dumbledore’s spy. This…man. 

“And I expect one in return – when the time is appropriate. I will hold it in reserve,” Snape said. “Though, really, an Auror should know not to touch a sleeping Death Eater.”

Harry jerked his head in a nod, and watched Snape disappear into the driver’s cab.

“You’re not a Death Eater,” he called out. “Not anymore. Voldemort’s dead.”

“And you stopped being the Boy Who Lived when Voldemort died?” returned Snape.

“It’s not the same,” muttered Harry. But he let it go.

ooOoo

They didn’t always sleep when they had down time.

Sometimes they’d sit on the stairs, one on the bottom with his feet on the pavement, leaning back on his elbows, the other two steps above. At first, conversation revolved around that evening’s passengers, or the astounding variety of places in the UK where wizards lived, or worked, or drank, or visited, or fought. Towns with names like Great Snoring, and Loose Bottom, and Titty Ho. They didn’t talk about the past – at all. No mention of Hogwarts, or Albus Dumbledore, or Voldemort, the war, the snake. 

But comfort developed over time, as it is wont to do when two people are thrown together in close quarters over long periods. And slowly, bit by bit, Harry learned bits and pieces about Snape – that he’d leased a flat in London, that he was working half-time as a Potions Master for St. Mungo’s, filling the rest of his time working on a personal project. Snape didn’t volunteer details, and Harry didn’t ask for them. Harry, for his part, revealed that he was living in rooms above George’s joke shop in Diagon Alley, that there was a lot more paperwork than he’d expected in his Auror job, and that he wasn’t sure he’d stay in the Corps when all was said and done, but better not tell anyone else, not yet anyway. 

“What will you do, then?” asked Snape, quirking an eyebrow at Harry with interest. He was standing on the kerb, smoking a cigarette he’d bummed from one of the passengers. He looked at it critically, then sighed and dropped it, squishing it with his shoe. 

Harry, sitting on the middle step this time, frowned, still trying to get a handle on this new Snape that asked ordinary questions, appeared to be interested, and scowled instead of cursed when Minerva sent them back into London after a jaunt through the country. He was particularly tired today, after a twelve-hour shift on a stake-out, and was feeling testy.

“I don’t know – ride on my fame, maybe? Give interviews? Sign on as the Ministry’s poster boy?”

An odd look came over Snape’s face then, and he stared at Harry appraisingly. Harry didn’t let himself look away. Finally, Snape’s face quirked into what, for him, passed as a smile.

Harry was really beginning to like that smile. It did something to him, something quite unexpected. He shifted a bit, and watched Snape.

“My little charade ended more than three years ago, Potter. I trust you don’t want to hang onto it any more than I do.” He walked past Harry into the bus, fingers brushing his shoulder as he squeezed by. His final words were low, almost melodic.

“Let it go.”

Harry sat there, staring out into the quiet night, feeling young, and foolish. He reckoned Snape didn’t know it had taken him a full year to get himself together after the War. To grieve the dead. To heal his wounds. To celebrate the victory. To contemplate his future. To study for and sit his N.E.W.T.s.

All that time, all the time since. All he had learned. As much as he’d grown.

Nothing – nothing – made more sense than those three simple words.

_Let it go._

Snape obviously had.

“Pick-up in Liverpool,” Snape called out.

“I hate Liverpool,” Harry complained as he got up and joined Snape in the driver’s compartment. “They always come on singing Beatles tunes.”

“They do not,” Snape said. “And Liverpool is my favorite stop. The Knight Bus doesn’t stand out as much next to the Marvelous Mystery Tour buses.”

Snape put the bus in motion.

“Actually,” Harry began as Severus rolled out onto the high street through town, “I’m thinking of seeing the world – maybe backpacking on the continent. A year – maybe two. After that – who knows?”

“Planning two years out is adequate,” said Snape. The bus was gaining speed and bouncing along the cobblestone street that paralleled the train track. “Perhaps, after seeing the world, you’ll know what comes next.”

“When did you get to be so wise?” asked Harry, grabbing the stability bar just as the bus lurched across the country to somewhere outside of Liverpool along the M62. 

“When did you start to notice?” answered Snape.

Harry kept his eyes on the road before them, and didn’t try to hide his grin.

ooOoo

Harry and Severus were less of a sensation on the Knight Bus then one might have imagined. Not many riders managed to get a good look at the driver, of course, but person after person failed to recognize Harry when he jumped to the kerb to welcome them.

“Must be the glasses,” he mused early one morning, just before quitting time, taking them off and cleaning the more modern lenses he’d been wearing of late, using the inside of his uniform shirt.

“Perhaps,” said Snape. “Might also be that you’re wearing a ridiculous purple velveteen uniform that lowers your IQ by twenty points and reduces your vocabulary by half, and that no one’s arse, not even yours, looks good in purple.”

“Hey!” protested Harry, craning his neck as if to get a look at said arse. He shook his head and adjusted his spectacles back on his nose. He sighed. “You’re right. It looks horrible.”

“I belittle your intelligence and your arse and you whip your head around to examine your arse but ignore the insult about your intelligence?”

Harry grinned. “Your arse doesn’t look half bad in purple,” he said.

“You can’t even see my arse. I’m sitting on it.”

Harry just raised his eyebrows. “It’s kind of liberating, if you know what I mean. People not recognizing me here.”

“It’s all about expectations,” answered Snape. “No one expects to see you working the Knight Bus.”

“How the _hell_ the Ministry kept this quiet is beyond me,” Harry said, shaking his head.

“Or your friends,” said Snape, turning sharply to the right and cutting through an empty produce market. Several stalls scrambled out of the way as the bus crossed a central kerb and bounced back on the motorway.

Harry smiled. “You don’t know my friends,” he said. “Not really. We’re pretty good at not talking – protecting each other’s backs.”

Snape snorted. “Mine were only concerned with their own backs.”

Harry chanced a look at Snape. He’d spoken so casually. And used the past tense. As if those friends were a thing of the past. He considered Snape’s words, rearranged more of what he thought he knew about Severus Snape, and ventured on. In for a Knut and all.

“Maybe you need some new friends, then,” Harry suggested. “They’re kind of handy, especially when you don’t have much in the way of family.”

“When did you get to be so wise?” Snape answered, looking out the side window to hide his smile.

“When did you start to notice?” quipped Harry.

And then they were both chuckling, the two most famous products of the Wizarding war, dressed in purple velveteen, inside a three-decker purple bus, as anonymous as they were likely ever to be.

ooOoo

“Maybe a Wizarding limousine service?” suggested Harry three weeks later. It was a full hour before official work time, and he’d brought fish and chips for both of them.

“An alternative to the Knight Bus for the upper class wizard?” said Snape. “Persons of privilege?”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Harry with a sigh. His feet were propped up on the instrument panel, his food in his lap. 

“Malfoys?”

“That’s _definitely_ not what I meant. Just – well, something we’re good at. Something like the Knight Bus. You know the roads, and Merlin knows we’ve taken apart the Apparition capacitor enough times to be able to build one in our sleep.”

“Perhaps a bus for a specific purpose – something smaller than the Knight Bus. More discreet.”

“We could outfit a bus with beds and curtains and run a hotel on wheels,” suggested Harry. “Maybe rent out the beds by the hour for people who just need a kip between activities.”

“I’m not sure we’d attract the appropriate clientele.” Snape was sitting cross-legged in the driver’s seat, facing Harry, his hat backwards on his head. He raised an eyebrow, looking at Harry significantly.

Harry looked blank, then he laughed and blushed. “Is that legal?” he asked. He smirked. “Could be lucrative.”

“It’s jarring,” said Snape, shaking his head as the blush faded from Harry’s face, though he continued to grin. “To consider a career change this late in my life. Even in my short career as headmaster, I was still a Potions Master.”

“You don’t like working for St. Mungo’s,” Harry reminded him. “You like your research. But you need an income to live on while you complete it.” He said it with such an air of familiarity and confidence that an onlooker would have assumed the two had been friends for quite some time.

“And you really don’t care that all of your friends will consider this a step backward? Giving up a promising career as an Auror to gallivant around the continent with Severus bloody Snape?”

“Gallivant?” Harry grinned. He stuck out his foot and poked Severus’ leg with the toe of his boot. “That sounds a lot more fun and a lot less dangerous than my current job.”

“You’re an idiot.” Snape picked up a chip and frowned at it. “Green, Potter. Do you ever eat anything green?”

“Pistachio ice cream. And carrots.”

“Need I state the obvious?” Snape squinted at a slightly burned chip and dropped it into his mouth.

“Fine. They’re not green but they are vegetables. I like pumpkin juice, pumpkin pie, cabbage – wait! Cabbage is green!” He looked at Snape triumphantly, then looked away quickly, catching Snape studying him.

Snape shook his head. “Or purple. Though pumpkins aren’t vegetables.”

“Oh?” Harry raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “Must have missed that discussion in Herbology.”

“I should make it my life’s goal to revise the Hogwarts curriculum,” said Snape.

“Don’t bother,” answered Harry. “Hermione’s way ahead of you.”

ooOoo

“If we’re really going to do this….” Harry looked up from the map they were studying together. They were kneeling on either side of the first bed, thirty minutes before their shift started. “We _are_ going to, aren’t we?”

“We’ve already submitted our respective letters of resignation. I’ve subleased my flat, we’ve purchased bicycles and backpacks and a Wizarding tent. You’ve told the Weasleys and the rest of your friends your plans. What makes you think this is _not_ going to happen?”

“Nothing. No, that’s not what I meant. I’ve just got something to say, that I need to tell you, and it really doesn’t need saying if we’re not going to have this adventure. Together, I mean.”

Severus looked up, taking his eyes off of Belgium and settling them on Harry Potter.

“We’ve been working this bus together for nearly four months. I’ve heard you snore and talk in your sleep. I’ve been subjected to your smelly feet when you take your boots off and put your feet up on the instrument panel. You argue with me over the definition of a vegetable and whether the list of Unforgiveables should be expanded. You put _sugar_ in your tea. You bite your bottom lip when you’re upset and drink Muggle soft drinks which make you burp and you regularly cut yourself shaving. What more do I need to know about you?”

“That I like blokes?” said Harry, watching Severus’ face as he spoke. “Because it might come up, since we’re planning to spend a year together hiking across Europe and sharing a tent?”

“Harry,” Severus said, shaking his head, “I said you _talk in your sleep._ ”

Harry blinked. Turned an embarrassing shade of red. 

“You knew,” he said, on a long exhale. 

“Of course I knew.”

“And …?”

Severus laughed. “I like blokes, too, Mr. Potter. I hardly think I’d be traipsing off on a year-long back-packing trip through Europe with you if I didn’t.”

“What about my mum?” 

“What about Ginny Weasley?”

Harry stared. Then grinned. Then frowned. Then grinned again.

Snape reached over and clapped him on the back. His fingers lingered, worked upward, brushed the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Breathe, Harry. Breathe.”

Harry breathed. Breathed as he felt the fingers at the nape of his neck work up into his hair, caress his skull, pull him gently but unquestionably forward. Breathed as Snape’s lips closed over his, surprisingly soft, undoubtedly more experienced. Forgot to breathe as the kiss deepened, as Severus’ other hand grasped his and pulled until they were both crawling up on the bed, collapsing together atop the maps and guidebooks. 

And not once – not even once – did Harry think _I’m kissing Professor Snape. Fuck! I’m kissing Snape!_

“I can’t believe I’m kissing you at last,” Harry whispered as he worked his mouth over the still-there scars on Severus’ neck. He shuddered as Severus kissed his ear, then captured his mouth again, kissing him with lips and tongue, framing his face in his dexterous hands, kissing him again.

He pulled Harry against him, hands working over his arse. This felt better than anything Harry had imagined, even better for the soft bed beneath them. He ground back against Severus, forgetting for a moment where they were as Severus’ hands pressed again into the flesh of his arse.

“Merlin, Harry, your arse is so fucking….” 

“Ahem.”

The hands stopped their delicious kneading, freezing on his arse as both their heads turned toward the door.

Snape clambered to his feet.

“Minerva – what brings you here?”

“I dispatched you to Mold five minutes ago and have had absolutely no response. I’m pleased to know that you’re not both lying dead, killed by highwaymen.”

Harry resisted the urge to crawl under the bed. But instead he took a fortifying breath, stood and faced his former Head of House.

“Highwaymen? Really Minerva. Thugs, perhaps. Ridiculously stupid thugs who’d have the impudence to challenge either myself or Harry. Or perhaps noxious fumes. We’re four months into this assignment and still aren’t convinced this bus isn’t a sentient creature itself.”

She stared at him, then at Harry, then back at Severus again. She had the strangest look on her face. Her lips were twitching. She looked as if she had something alive in her mouth and she was desperately trying to keep it from escaping. 

Snape took a step forward. “Minerva – is something wrong?”

“Professor McGonagall?” 

A sound – somewhere between a chortle and a strangled laugh – escaped her. She bent over, holding her stomach, then collapsed back onto the bed, wiping her eyes.

Harry appreciated very much that Severus didn’t try to cover up what they’d been doing. Not that either of them had any hope at all of hiding their prominent erections in these ridiculously tight velveteen trousers.

“Purple!” she managed at last.

Harry really hoped her heart held out. He’d hate thinking of her having gone to her grave with that particular image engraved on the back of her eyelids.

ooOoo

**Knight Bus Splinched**

>   
> _April 13, 2002_ At approximately eleven p.m. on Saturday, the Knight Bus suffered extensive damage when it was Splinched in a failed Apparition from Aberdeen to Dumfries. The stand-in driver, Mr. Ronald Weasley of Ottery St. Catchpole, and the conductor, his brother George Weasley, of London, were located off-course outside of Carlisle. Both sustained minor injuries and were treated at St. Mungo’s and released. The passenger compartment, including all sixteen passengers, landed safely in a traffic circle in Edinburgh, atop a statue of Horatio Nelson. Ministry Obliviators were called to the scene, as the magical enchantments on the bus are controlled by the operator and were broken when the bus Splinched. _See Photo Spread, Page A6 - Inquest into Ministry Hiring Practices, Page A9_  
> 

“Stop laughing.”

Severus’ face contorted as he tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress his laughter.

“I mean it – this is serious! Ron was injured – people could have _died_!”

“People could have died. They did not. The most serious injury was to Horatio Nelson’s ego.” He leafed forward to page A6. They regarded the photographs together.

“Stop it. Stop laughing. I mean it.” Harry turned to Severus and covered his mouth with his hand. Severus bit the hand playfully and pulled Harry forward into a kiss.

Harry didn’t think he’d ever get tired of kissing Severus. The man was inventive in every aspect of his life, even more so with sex than potions. Why the _hell_ had Harry assumed Severus’ research was potions-related? Turns out the man was writing the male/male portion of a new Muggle sex guide series. Since their first kiss that night on the Knight Bus, they’d worked through eight of the twelve chapters Severus had written.

“What else does the article say?” asked Severus, collapsing on his back on the bed beside Harry. He stared at the photograph of three quarters of the garishly purple Knight Bus balanced awkwardly atop a larger-than-life statue in the middle of a still-spurting fountain. 

“That they’re looking for a new driver,” said Harry. He grinned. “Seems the last one didn’t work out.”

“They’ll find someone,” said Severus. He rolled onto his back and pulled Harry on top of him. 

“Yeah,” said Harry. “You can’t take that job just yet. We still have four more chapters to get through.”

And without further ado, they launched into chapter nine ( _Toys are not for Children_ ), the Knight Bus completely forgotten.

-The End-


End file.
